S

COMMENTARY UNDERSTANDING NAZI ANIMAL PROTECTION AND THE HOLOCAUST

Arnold Arluke l and Boria Sax 2

Abstract. It is well known that the Nazis treated human beings with extreme cruelty but it less widely recognized that the Nazis also took some pains to develop and pass extensive

animal protection laws. How could the Nazis have professed stich concern for animals while treating humans so badly? It would be easy to dismiss Nazi proclamations on animals as mere hypocrisy but there may be other explanations for the contradiction. For example, anecdotal reports arld psychological evaluations of many prominent Nazis suggest they felt affection for animals but dislike of humans. Second, animal protection measures, whether sincere or not, may have been a legal veil to attack Jews and others considered undesirable. Third, the Nazis blurred moral distinctions between animals and people and tended to treat members of even the Master Race as animals at times. 7 his article argues that at the core of the Nazi treatment of humans and animals was a reconstitution of society's boundaries and mar-gins. All human cultures seek to protect what is perceived to be pure from that which is seen

to be dangerous and polluting and most societies establish fairly clear boundaries be-tween people and animals. In Nazi Germany, however, human identity was not con-taminated by including certain animal traits but certaih peoples were considered to be a very real danger to Aryan purity.

Department of Sociology and Anthropology, North-eastern University, Boston, MA 02115.

2„ uepartment of Modem Languages, Pace University,

White Plains, NY 10603.

INTRODUCTION

It is well known that the Nazis treated

human beings with extreme cruelty. Grisly "medical" experiments on humans have been carefully documented and analyzed (e.g., Lifton 1986) as has the cold, calcu-lated extermination of millions of people in the Holocaust (e.g., Hilberg 1961). Less

well known are the extensive measures

taken by Nazis to ensure the humane care and protection of animals. How could the Nazis have been so concerned about cruelty to animals while they treated people so inhumanely? It would be easy

to dismiss the apparently benevolent Nazi

attitude toward animals as "hypocrisy,"

but this would be a facile way of evading an examination of the psychological and social dynamics of Nazi thinking and be-

havior. Rather than questioning the

authenticity of the motivations behind Nazi animal protection — a question that

is unanswerable — it may be more useful

to ask how such thinking was possible and

what significance it had.

We offer three explanations for this con-tradiction. First, at a personal or

psychological level, this behavior may not seem so contradictory because anecdotal

reports and psychological assessments of

many prominent Nazi political and military

leaders suggest they felt affection and

regard for animals but enmity and distance

toward humans. While love of animals is itself considered an admirable quality, under the Nazis it may have obscured brutality toward human beings, both on the personal and the political level,

whatever its roots were. Second, animal protection measures, whether sincere or not, may have been a legal veil to level an

attack on the Jews. In making this attack,

since both were portrayed as victims of "oppressors" such as Jews. Third, the Nazis abolished moral distinctions be-tween animals and people by viewing people as animals. The result was that animals could be considered "higher" than some people. All three of these ex-planations argue for a culture where it was possible to increase the moral status of animals and decrease the moral status of some humans by blurring the boundaries between humans and animals, making it possible for National Socialists to rational-ize their behavior and to disenfranchise large groups of humans.

Although our analysis assumes a posi-tion of analytic detachment, this stance should not be read as an excusing of Nazi behavior. Our analysis of the Nazi move-ment has far-reaching ethical implications, but these are largely beyond the scope of this paper. We believe, in this instance, that moral concern is best channeled into

understanding; indeed, a highly moralistic discussion might obscure the dynamics of the National Socialist movement.

Nazi Animal Protection

Around the end of the nineteenth century, kosher butchering and vivisection were the for6most concerns of the animal

protection movement in Germany

(Hoelscher 1949; Neff 1989; Trohler and Maehle 1987). These concerns continued during the Third Reich and became formal-

ized as laws. On April 21, 1933, almost immediately after the Nazis came to

power, they passed a set of laws regulating the slaughter of animals. At th-e start of 1933, the Nazi representatives to the Prus-sian parliament met in order to ban vivisec-tion (Proctor 1988). In August, 1933, over German radio Hermann Goring an-nounced an end to the "unbearable tor-

and threatened to - commit to Loi

tion camps those who still think they can continue to treat animals as inanimate property" (Goring 1939, 70, 72). Goring

decried the "cruel" experiments of unfeel-ing scientists whose animals were operated on, burned, or frozen without anesthetics. A ban on vivisection was enacted in Bavaria as well as Prussia (AMA

1933), although the Nazis then partially retreated from a full ban. The Nazi animal protection laws of November, 1933, per-

mitted experiments on animals in some

circumstances, but subject to a set of eight

conditions and only with the explicit per-mission of the Minister of the Interior,

supported by the recommendation of local authorities. The conditions were designed to eliminate pain and prevent unnecessary experiments. Horses, dogs,

cats, and apes were singled out for special protection. Permission to experiment on

animals was given not to individuals but

only to institutions (Giese and Kahler 1944).

Inconspicuously buried in the animal

protection laws of November, 1933 (point four, section two), was a provision for the

"mercy killing" of animals. The law nyt

only allowed but actually required that domesticated animals that were old, sick,

and worn out, or for which "life has be-

come a torment," be "painlessly" put to

death. The wording of the provision was ambiguous; it was not entirely clear whether a family would be required to kill,

say, an old dog that did nothing but sit by

the fire. One binding commentary, passed

immediately after the laws themselves,

mandated that an expert should decide whether further life for an animal was a

"torment" in unclear cases (Giese and Kahler 1944).

In addition to the laws against vivisec-

tion and kosher slaughter, scores of addi-

tional legal measures regulating the treat-ment of animals were enacted from 1933 through 1943, probably several times the number in the preceding half century (Giese and Kaliler 1944).These covered in excruciating detail a vast array of concerns from the shoeing of horses to the use of anesthesia. One law passed in 1936 showed "particular solicitude" (Waite 1947, 41) about the suffering of lobsters and crabs, stipulating that restaurants

were to kill crabs, lobsters, and other crus-

taceans by throwing them one at a time into rapidly boiling water (Giese and Kah-

ler 1944). Several "high officials" had

debated the question of the most humane

death for lobsters before this regulation

was passed, and two officials in the Interior

Ministry had prepared a scholarly treatise on the subject (Waite 1977).

The Nazis also sought to protect wildlife. In 1934 and 1935, the focus of Nazi legislation on animals shifted from farm animals and pets to creatures of the wild. The preface to the hunting laws of March 27, 1935, announced a eugenic purpose behind the legislation, stating, "The duty of a true hunter is not only to hunt but also to nurture and protect wild animals, in order that a more varied, stronger and healthier breed shall emerge and be preserved" (Giese and Kahler 1944). Nazi veterinary journals often fea-tured reports on endangered species

(Proctor 1988). Goring, in particular, was

concerned about the near extinction in Germany of bear, bison, and wild horse,

and sought to establish conservation and breeding programs for dwindling species and to pass new and more uniform hunt-ing laws and taxes (Irving 1989, 181). Goring's Game Laws are still operative today.

A uniform national hunting association was created to regulate the sport, restock lakes, tend forests, and protect dying

species. Taxes levied on hunters would be used for the upkeep of forests and game

parks. Goring also established three nature

reserves, introduced elk, and began a bison sanctuary with two pure bulls and seven hybrid cows on one of the reserves

(Irving 1989, 182). He eventually suc-

ceeded in rearing 47 local bison. He also created a Game Research Laboratory,

where he reintroduced night owl, wood grouse, heathcock, gray goose, raven,

beaver, and otter, which Albert Speer

(1970, 555) referred to as "Goring's

animal paradise." Goring viewed forests

almost in religious terms, calling them

"God's cathedrals," and culling of game

populations to prevent starvation or

epidemics was conducted as a "pseudo-

religious duty" (Irving 1989, 182). The Nazi animal protection laws, formu-

lated with considerable medical and legal

sophistication, were characterized by an almost compulsive attention to detail.

While bureaucratic thoroughness may have been the major driving force behind

theSe documents, they also extended the scope of legal control far beyond the boundaries of human society by attempt-

ing a centralized regulation of all relation-ships, not only among people but 4

throughout the natural world. The purpose

of the Law for the Protection of Animals,

as noted in its introduction, was "to awaken and strengthen compassion as one of the highest moral values of the

German people" (Giese and Kahler 1944; Waite 1977, 41). The philosophical basis for the laws was the attempt to minimize pain, according to one doctoral disserta-tion written primarily during the Nazi

period (Hoelscher 1949). The fact that animals were to be protected for their own sakes, rather than for their relationship to humanity, was described as a new legal

concept (Giese and Kahler 1944;

Hoelscher 1949; Meyer 1975).

Like virtually all legal documents, these laws contained ambiguities and possible loopholes. In many respects, the laws of November, 1933, did not go far beyond the laws protecting animals in Britain, then

considered the most comprehensive in the world. The severity of the punishments mandated by the German laws was, how-ever, virtually unprecedented in modern times. "Rough mistreatment" of an animal could result in a punishment of two years in prison plus a fine (Giese and Kahler 1944).

It is not clear, however, how vigorously or conscientiously the animal protection

laws were enforced, particularly outside of Prussia. Barnard (1990) maintains that several experiments on animals were con-

ducted secretly by Nazi doctors. Hilberg (1961, 600-604) also describes several Nazi medical experiments on animals that preceded those on human beings. At any

rate, Nazi Germany gradually became a state where petty theft could result in death, while violent crimes might go un-punished. Punishment did not fit the crime in any traditional sense. The new govern-ment retained the entire legal apparatus of

the Weimar Republic but used it in the service of a different concept. In accord-ance with declarations by Hitler, for ex-ample, the laws of July 2, 1934, on "Measures for Protection of the State"

provided that punishment was to be deter-mined not by the crime itself but by The "fundamental idea" behind the crime (Staff 1964). Mistreatment of animals,

then, might be taken by courts as evidence of a fundamentally antisocial mentality or even of Jewish blood.

The preoccupation with animal protec-tion in Nazi Germany was evident in other social institutions and continued almost

until the end of World War II. In 1934, the new government hosted an international conferenCe on animal protection in Berlin.

Uver tile speakers pou ► ui

by enormous swastikas, were the words

"Entire epochs of love will be needed to repay animals for their value and service" (Meyer 1975). In 1936, the German

Society for Animal Psychology was founded, and in 1938 animal protection was accepted as a subject to be studied in German public schools and universities. In 1943 an academic program in animal

psychology was inaugurated at the Han-

nover School of Veterinary Medicine

(Giese and Kahler 1944).

The Ideological and Historical Context

Though it appeared politically monolithic, the Nazi movement contained a surpris-ingly wide range of intellectual opinions. The leaders, in general, showed little inter-est in abstract theory, and only Alfred

Rosenberg even attempted to synthesize Nazism into a cohesive set ofdoctrines.

One cannot, therefore, understand the movement as though it were centered around an abstract philosophy, searching for more formal kinds of logic and coherence. Nazism was far more a cluster of loosely associated concerns. Even lead-ing National Socialists avoided committing

themselves on the subject of ideology, emphasizing that in its totality, National Socialism was indefinable (Fest 1970).

Nevertheless, the National Socialists at-

tempted to actualize a racial ideology and,

in so doing, to create a new Germanic

identity (Mosse 1966). The search for Ger-man national character certainly did not start during the Third Reich. The enormous anxiety and preoccupation of the Nazis

over national identity and differentiation

from other human groups was only a

heightened version of Germany's long ob-

session with its identity and its boundaries

from other human groups and its relation-

ship with animals. Essential to this con- . ..;truttion of national identity were certain

themes regarding man's connections to nature and animal life that were articulated in German romantic poetry, music, and social thought. These ideas shaped Nazi thinking and served as intellectual resour-ces that were drawn upon and distorted as expedient.

Man as Beast. One influential theme, par-ticularly evid6nt in the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, was the rejection of intellectual culture and reason and the praising of animal instinct in man. This view attached enormous importance to the animal origin and character of man. It sought to celebrate the earth and beasts in mythical ways and to glorify Nietzsche's "blond beast" or "raubtier," 1 playing up the beast

in man as a type of "secret idol," possess-ing qualities of vitality, unscrupulousness,

and blind will and obedience (Glaser 1978, 138).

Nietzsche was one of several heroes under Nazism whose work was distorted to become more brutal and aggressive, particularly his conception of the "blond beast." Glaser calls this element of Nation-al Socialism "man as predator." "The domestic animal who had been domesti-cated on the surface only was in the end superior to and more honest than man; in the predator one could 'rediscover his in-stincts and with that his honesty'" (Glaser .

1978, 138). Animal instinct came to repre-sent rebellion against culture and intellec-tualism. Returning to the animal nature within man, communing with nature, and el6ating animal life to the level of- cult worship were seen as alternatives to

modernity, technolOgy, and urbanization, according to Glaser. Acceptance of this view, it was thought, would lead to the

spiritual and ideological changes neces-sary and desirable in German cultural life

for a new national sell-identity to emerge (Gasman 1971).

As part of the rejection of culture, the

new German, according to National Socialist ideology, was to disavow humanitarian behavior toward fellow

humans as insincere. One element of this

totalitarian system was the principle of contempt for certain human beings. flimmler, for example, called for renounc-ing "softness" (Fest 1970, 120). "False" comradeship and compassion were derogated. Instead of encouraging corn-

passion, Hitler emphasized that the new

German should emulate certain animal behaviors such as the obedience and faith-fulness of pets and the strength, fearless-

ness, aggressiveness, and even cruelty found in beasts of prey, qualities that were

among the movement's most stringent

principles (Fest .1970, 120, 293).

The training of SS personnel illustrated the importance of these animal qualities, even if it ironically meant killing animals. It is alleged that after 12 weeks of working closely with a German shepherd, each SS soldier had to break his dog's neck in front of an officer in order to earn his stripes.

Doing so, it was thought, would instill

teamwork, discipline, and obedience to the Fuhrer — qualities that were deemed

more important than feelings for anything, including animals (Radde 1991).

Hitler himself pleaded for these qualities

in German youth: "I want violent, im-

perious, fearless, cruel young people ... The free, magnificent beast of prey must

once again flash from their eyes ... I want youth strong and beautiful ..., and athletic youth ... In this way I shall blot out thousands of years of human domestica-

tion. I shall have the pure, noble stuff of nature" (Maltitz 1973, 62). In another in-

stance, Hitler called for German youth to

be as "swift as whippets" (Grunberger 1971, 136a). These new Germans were to

•the decay of other civilizations; and vegetarianism became a symbol of the new, pure civilization that was to be Germany's future. Hunting was seen as

appropriate to an earlier stage of man when killing animals involved some "risk" to the hunter. Now, only "sick" animals and those needed for food should be killed. When animals were to be killed for food, they were given a "sacred" status and their death was seen as a form of "sacrifice." This spiritual attitude toward animals, even those destined to be killed, could be seen in Nazi farm propaganda:

The Nordic peoples accord the pig the highest possible honor ... in the cult-of the Germans the pig occupies the first place and is the first among the domestic animals ...The predominance of the pig, the sacred

animal destined to sacrifices among the Nordic peoples, has drawn its originality from the great trees of the German forest. The Semites do not understand the pig, they do not accept the pig, they reject the pig, whereas this animal occupies the first place in the cult of the Nordic peoples (Brady 1969, 53).

Holistic Attitudes. A third theme, par-ticularly expressed by philosophers such as Richard Wagner, exalted synthesis against analysis, unity and wholeness against disintegration and atomism, and

Volk legend against scientific truth (Viereck 1965). Life, according to this view, had an oFganic unity and connected-ness that should not be destroyed by men-tal analysis or physical dissection. "Mechanistic" science and the Jews per-ceived to be behind it were portrayed as part of a destructive analytic intellec-tualism that treated nature and animals mechanically by dissolving the whole into parts, thereby losing the invisible force that makes the whole more than the sum of its

parts. It is important to understand that the

Nazis were not opposed to science per se but only to a particular approach. 1 They

wanted a science that was influenced more by Goethe than by Newton.

These attitudes helped to shape the Third Reich's criticisms of "mechanistic"

scientific thinking and practices such as vivisection. The path of Western civiliza-tion had taken an incorrect turn, according to National Socialism. Mechanistic, ex-ploitative technology, attributed to the Jews, was seen as cutting man off from his connections with nature and ultimately to his own spirit. Particularly influential was Wagner's thinking. Wagner had urged the smashing of laboratories and the removal of scientists and "vivisectors." The vivisec-tor, to Wagner, came to represent both the scientists' "torture" of animals as well as the capitalists' torture of the proletariat. Wagner also portrayed the vivisector as both evil and Jewish, but he was not alone in this. In cernma, oder Tugend and Laster

(Melena 1 877), a sentimental novel of the 1870s that had done much to arouse public sentiment against animal ex-perimentation, the author portrayed the vivisectionists as cultists who, under the pretense of practicing science, ritualistical-ly cut up living animals in orgiastic rites. The author may not have intended to iden-tify the vivisectionists in the novel with the Jews (it is very clear that membership in

the cult of vivisectionists is a matter of volition rather than heredity) but the rep-resentation of vivisectionists in the book was so close to the popular stereotypes of Jews engaged in kosher butchering, it was inevitable that many people would make the connection.

Biological Purity. A fourth theme, also ex-pressed by Wagner, involved Nordic racism and the biological purity of Aryans. The human race, it was argued, had be-come contaminated and impure through

be part animal, renouncing a certain side of their humanity. The compassion normal-

ly reserved for humans was to be redirected toward animals, and the cold aggressiveness of animal instinct became the model German. Animals were to be identified with and compassion toward animals rather than humans was to be encouraged, if not required. This was, in

fact, part of the intent of the animal protec-tion laws.

of an ideal society; duty, he claimed, was a biological impulse shared with all

animals in that they were bound to care

for family and the larger collectivity, both necessary for survival.

This preoccupation with animals as moral beings influenced Nazi thinking. The Nazis called for redressing early wrongs to animals; man was to have a regard for nature as a moral duty. Goebbels com-

mented in his diaries:

Reverence for Animals. A second theme was that animals were to be regarded as

moral if not sacred beings. For example, the German zoologist Ernst Haeckel, writ-ing at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, attacked religion, primarily Christianity, for putting man above animals and nature, and for isolat-ing man from nature and creating con-tempt for animals. hie believed that man and animals had the same natural as well as moral status and that much of human morality stemmed from animals, claiming that Christian moral principles such as "do

unto others as you would have them do unto you" were "derived from our animal

ancestors" (Bramwell 1989,. 49). In Haeckel's view, animals were to be learned from, using the laws of nature as a way to -reform human society. The func-tion of human societies, like animal societies, was to survive, and biological fitness was essential to both. Not surpriS-ingly, he supported "racial hygiene" through euthanasia (Bramwell 1989, 49).

He deduced the ideal state from his obser-vations of animals and nature, maintaining

that the most efficient organization to en-sure survival among animals (and there-

fore human society should adopt it too)

was to be highly centralized and hierarchi-cal, like the brain and nervous system (Bramwell 1989, 50). In his analyses, he stressed "duty" as essential to the success

Man should not feel so superior to animals. He has no reason to. Man believes that he alone has intelligence, a soul, and the

power of speech. I - las not the animal these things? Just because we, with our dull sen-

ses, cannot recognize them, it does not prove that they are not there (Taylor 1983,

77).

The moral status of animals was to be

changed in the coming German empire; they, were to be sentient objects accorded

love and respect as a sacred and essential

element in man's relationship with nature. For example, toward the end of the war,

the editors of a book on legal protection of animals proclaimed, "Animals are not,

as before [the Nazi period] objects of per-sonal property or unprotected creatures, with which a man may do as he pleases, but pieces of living nature which demand respect and compassion." Looking to the future, they quoted the words of GOring

that "For the protection of animals, the

education of humanity is more important than laws" (Giese and Kahler 1944).

As sacred things, society was not to violate animals by killing them, either for sport or for food. Their vision of the future included a world where animals would not

be unnecessarily harmed, holding out as

role models various groups that were seen as respectful toward animal life. Hunting became a symbol of the civilization left

behind; meat eating became a symbol of

a mixing of we races ariu

animal flesh. "Regeneration of the human race" was linked to animal protection and vegetarianism (Viereck 1965, 119). Wagner's principal concern was with the

notion of biological purification of Ger-

many and its political future. He wrote that

"present day socialism must combine in true and hearty fellowship with the vegetarians, the protectors of animals, and

the friends of temperence" (Viereck 1965, 119) to save mankind from Jewish aggres-

sion. Viereck (1965, 119) refers to this

"fellowship" as Wagner's "united front of

purifiers" who could oppose the an-tivegetarian stance of Jews. According to Viereck, Wagner stated "the Jewish God found Abel's fatted lamb more savoury than Cain's offer" of a vegetable. •

In an essay first published in 1881 en-titled "Heldentum and Christenheit" (Heroism and Christianity), Wagner - articu-lated an anti-Semitic theory of history that linked vegetarianism to Germany's future. This drew on the racial theories of Arthur Gobineau, the philosophy of Schopen-hauer, and his own idiosyncratic brand of

Catholicism. In abandoning their original

vegetarian diet, Wagner believed, people had become corrupted by the blood of slaughtered animals. This degeneration was then spread through the mixing of races. Interbreeding eventually spread through the entire Roman Empire, until only the "noble" Germanic race remained pure. After their conquest of Rome, the

Germans, however, finally succumbed by mating with the subject peoples. "Regeneration" could be achieved, even by highly corrupted races such as the Jews, through a return to natural foods, provided this was accompanied by partaking of the Eucharist (Wagner 1888a). Wagner also

believed that one could not live without "animal food" in the northern climates, so

he suggested that in the future there would

UC Cl •a • • • • • •

climates where it would not be necessary to eat animals, thereby permitting Europe

to return to pristine jungle and wild beasts

(Viereck 1965, 119).

Racial contamination, it was argued,

had mixed biologically inferior human stock with Aryan blood, thereby threaten-ing the purity of the highest species. The

physician Ludwig Woltmann (1936), for

example, described the Germans as the

highest species because of their perfect

physical proportions and their heightened

spirituality. He argued that life was a con-stant struggle against the biological decay of this highest species. This biological struggle was waged against the sub-human, a notion that can be linked to an intellectual undercurrent in the German movement known as the neo -Manichaean

gnosis, a third-century cosmology given a secular form by a Viennese monk at the beginning of the twentieth century.

The• monk, Adolf Lanz, published a book called Theozoology that claimed that

in the beginning there were two races, the

Aryans and the Apes, that Lanz called the "animal people." The Aryans were pure

and good whereas the animal people rep-resented darkness and sought to sexually defile Aryans. Because of such interbreed )

ing, the original Aryans and animal people no longer existed, but Lanz claimed that one could still distinguish and rank races

according to the proportion of Aryan or

ape blood they possessed. Thus Nordic

people were close to pure Aryan and were ranked the highest race and Jews were ranked the lowest because they were close to pure ape (Rhodes 1980, 107). There are echoes of this idea in the writings

of Wagner, who maintained in "Heldentum" that the Semitic races had

always viewed themselves as descended

from the apes, while the Aryan races traced their descent "from the Gods"

(Wagner 1888a). According to Rhodes (1980, 108), there is some evidence that Hitler read the work of Lanz and accepted his view.

The Nazis, in many ways, departed from the anthropocentric understanding of the cosmos that has dominated Occidental civilization since at least the late Middle

. - Ages. Their world was not so much

centered around man, at least as presently constituted, as about the process of evolu-tion, conceived as a process of perpetual

improvement through "survival of the fit-test." This process, however, was not viewed so much as a spontaneous process but as something that, in the contem-

porary world, sometimes required assis-tance (Proctor 1988). In other words, it became a project to biologically perfect

what it meant to be German.— a task not unlike that taken with German shepherd

dogs who were deliberately bred to repre-

sent and embody the spirit of National Socialism. Van Stephanitz, the creator of this breed, sought national status for a

local population of coyote-like dogs in the 1920s that were to be regarded as racially better dogs, analogous to better-bred

humans, and whose only reason for exist-ence was to go to war on the day hostilities began (Radde 1991).

Central to National Socialist ideology was the que-st for racial purity by creating a "superrace" and eliminating "inferior

races." Indeed, laws passed under the

Third Reich to improve the eugenic stock

of animals anticipated the way in which

Germans and non-Aryans were treated

eugenically. Germans were to be treated as -farm animals, bred for the most desirable Aryan traits while ridding them-

selves of weaker and less desirable animal

specimens. Such remodeling of civilization

was not to flout the "natural order," mean-ing that distinctions between humans,

animals, and the larger "natural" world

were not to make up the basic -structure of

life. Rather, the fundamental distinction made during the Third Reich was between that which was regarded as "racially" pure

and that which was polluting and dangerous. The former was embodied in

the Aryan people and nature, the latter in other humans who were synonymous with "lower" animals.

According to Hitler's own fanciful anthropology, non -Aryans were sub-

human and should be considered lower than domestic animals. He stated in Mein

.Kampf that slavery came before the domestication of animals. The Aryans sup-posedly subjugated the "lower races": "First the vanquished drew the plough,

only later the horse" (Hitler 1938). This, in

Hitler's imagination, was the "paradise"

that the Aryans eventually lost through the

"original sin" of mating with the con-

quered people. Such a view clearly placed certain people below animals. The Nazi

notion of race in many ways assumed the

symbolic significance usually associated with species; the new phylogenetic hierar-chy could locate certain "races" below animals. The danger and pollution normal-

ly thought to be posed by animals to

humans was replaced with other "races." The Germans were the highest "species,"

above all other life; some "higher" animals, however, could be placed above other "races" or "subhumans" in the

"natural" hierarchy.

UNDERSTANDING THE

CONTRADICTION

Concern for Animals/Antipathy

for Humans

In trying to understand Nazi animal protec-

tion, we would be remiss to ignore the

possibility that such measures stemmed

from personal interest in or affection for animals by key Nazi figures. Several mem-bers of the German general staff, for ex-ample, were reported to .laud various qualities in their own pets, to support animal rights, and to oppose hunting and

meat eating. On the one hand, this explanation

should be questioned because reports of Nazi compassion for animals are based, in part, on personal diaries or notes that may have been circulated or written to create a sympathetic image of Nazi leaders as warm and .human people or as having

values consistent with the National Socialist movement such as rural glorifica-

tion. 2 On the other hand, there are lines of

evidence that support such an explana-tion. First, there is widespread consistency in reports of Nazi compassion for animals, some of which date to long before the 1930s and 1940s. Second, there are some data supporting this explanation that are

not autobiographical or biographical but

are based on direct personality assess-

ments of Nazis. Third,. the sympathetic

attitudes toward animals are consistent with the prior cultural trends in German thinking discussed earlier. And last, these

reports are often coupled with con-temptuous attitudes toward humans that

fit, in two respects, psychiatric profiles of

Nazi leaders. The most common profile argues that intimate human relationships were more difficult for these individuals to sustain than were relationships with animals. A more recent profile .(Litton 1986) suggests that caring for animals may have been a coping device that allowed Nazis to "double" or maintain a sense of self as humane while behaving insensitive-ly or cruelly toward humans. Thus, key

members of the German general staff may have, for whatever motivation, personally identified with animals while having con-tempt for humanity. At this psychological

level, animal protection measures and the

Holocaust seem more compatible than contradictory.

Not surprisingly, Adolf Hitler has received the most biographical study. The analyses describe his interest in animals and pets, as well as his vegetarianism and opposition to hunting, although his motivations for these behaviors are less

clear. Bromberg and Small (1983), for in-stance, contend that Hitler's compassion for animals was no more sincere than his interest in children; both were mere propaganda ploys, and he supposedly

once shot and killed a dog without reason. The vast majority of anecdotal reports sug-

gest a very different picture, however. Dogs, as companion animals, appeared

to be an integral part of Hitler's entire life. His fondness and bonding with dogs was

noted long before his rise to power. During the early 1920s, Hitler's landlady, Frau Riechert, observed that a largedog

named "Wolf" was his constant com-panion. Dogs, throughout much of his life, were Hitler's closest attachments (Padfield

1984, 475). bland (1976, 133) claims that Hitler "had a need for the faithfulness he found in dogs, and had a unique under-

standing of them," commenting once that some dogs "are so intelligent that it's

agonizing." According to Padfield (1984),

Hitler frequently remarked on his wolfhound Biondi's wholehearted devo-tion to him while expressing doubts about the complete loyalty of his staff.

According to Stone (1980, 62), in his

last days, Hitler came to depend on the

companionship of Eva Braun and his dogs,

having his favorite dog and its pups with him in the bomb shelter. During these final

days, Hitler permitted no one but himself

to touch or feed Blondi's pup, Wolf (Waite 1977, 425), and he risked his life every day

by taking Biondi for a walk outside his

bunker (Serpell 1986). When it came time

: for Hitler and others to commit suicide, he

could not bring himself to give Biondi the poison or watch her die (Payne 1960).

Besides dogs, Hitler apparently felt some bond with other animals. In Mein

Kampf, Hitler (1938) explained that deprivation had taught him to empathize with mice, so he shared his food with them. When living in Vienna, it was known that he would save bits of dried bread to feed the birds and squirrels when he read outside. He was particularly fond of birds,

being drawn to ravens. He later gave spe-cial orders that ravens were never to be molested (Waite 1977, 41). Hitler, how-ever, was most obsessed with wolves. Ac-cording to Langer (1972), Hitler was "intrigued" by wolves and because Hitler

loomed so large in German society, his interest was widely known.

In his earlier years, he used the nick-name "Wolf: 13 (Langer 1972, 93). In the 1920s Hitler became friends with Frau Helena Bechstein, the wife of a famous Berlin piano manufacturer, who played the role of foster mother to Hitler. Hitler would

often sit at her feet and lay his head against her bosom while she stroked his hair

tenderly and murmured, "Mein

Woelfchen" (Strasser 1943, 301). Hitler chose "Herr Wolf" as his cover name.1-iis

favorite dogs were Alsations, that is,

"Wolfhunde" in German, and these were

the only ones he allowed himself to be

photographed with. In France he called his

headquarters "Wolfschlucht" (Wolf's

Gulch), in the Ukraine "Werewolf," in Bel-

gium "Wolfsschlucht" (Wolf's Gorge), and in East Prussia "Wolfschanze" (Wolf's Lair)--saying to a servant there "I am the wolf and this is my den." 4 After the

Anschluss with Austria in 1938, he asked his sister Paula to change her name to Frau

Wolf. The name of the secretary he kept for 20 years was Johanna Wolf. One of the

tunes from a favorite Walt Disney movie

that he whistled often and absentmindedly

was "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" (Langer 1972, 246). German guerrilla

fighters who would provide resistance to

allied forces were called the

"werewolves" (Speer 1970, 555).

Certainly, Hitler was not alone in his

interest in animals and his keeping of pets.

Goring had several pet lions; Goebbels,

Hess, Hoss, and several other elite Nazis

had pet dogs. A typical example of such

affection was Klaus Donitz, admiral of the

German Navy, who was known to have a

deep love for dogs. When he would return home his first greeting was always for the

family dog, a little Spitz named Purzel (Padfield 1984, 115). Later, he had another

pet dog named Wolf whom "he loved

dearly." He remarked once "there is noth-ing in the world more faithful than a dog.

He believes his master unconditionally.

What he does is right" (Padfield 1984, 331). Donitz also expressed concern for the protection of stray clogs: "I think I shall start a kindergarten when I get out, a mixed one for puppies as well as children,"

(Padfield 1984, 475). He did not, however,

ever create such an orphanage. Padfield suggests that Donitz may have simply fal-

len under the influence of Hitler, who emphasized the virtues of obedience in

animals, or conversely that he had doubts

about the correctness of the path he was

following or that he, like Hitler, had doubts

about the complete loyalty of his staff.

As mentioned earlier, when it came to

hunting, the only sportsman was Goring."

Other leading Nazis appeared to show little interest in it or staunchly opposed it,

including Hitler, who was known to have a strong distaste for hunting. I Oland (1976,

424 -25), for example, recounts that once, when dinner conversation turned to hunt-

ing, Hitler commented: "I can't see what there is in shooting, you go out armed with

a highly perfected modern weapon and

without risk to yourself kill a defenseless animal" (Toland 1976, 424-25). Hitler fre-quently criticized hunting:

How can a person be excited about such a thing. Killing animals, if it must be done, is „the butcher's business. But to spend a great deal of money on it in addition ... I under-stand, of course, that there Must be profes-sional hunters to shoot sick animals. If only there were still some danger connected with hunting, as in the days when men used spears for killing game. But today, when

anybody With a fat belly can safely shoot the animal down from a distance ... Hunting and horse racing are the last remnants of a dead feudal world (Speer 1970, 115-16).

Nor was Hitler alone in his opposition to hunting. Himmler, for instance, had a "positively hysterical opposition to hunt-

ing," according to Fest (1975, 121). In-deed, Himmler's "lunch was ruined if he was reminded that animals had been slaughtered." He once protested to his doctor and future therapist:

How can you find pleasure, Herr Kerstein, in shooting from behind cover at poor crea-tures browsing on the edge of a wood— in-nocent, defenceless, unsuspecting? It is really pure murder. Nature is so marvellous-ly beautiful and every animal has a right to live. It is this point of view that I admire so much in our forefathers. They, for instance, formally declared war on rats and

which were required to stop their depreda-tions and leave a fixed area within a definite time limit, before a war on annihilation was begun against them. You will find this respect for animals in all Indo-Germanic peoples. It was of extraordinary interest to me to hear recently that even today Bud-dhist monks, when they pass through a wood in the evening, carry a bell with them, to make any woodland animals they might meet keep away, so that no harm will come

to them. But with us every slug is trampled

on, every worm destroyed (Wykes 1972,

89-90).

Emulating Wagner / 6 Hitler and other elite Nazis became vegetarians (Waite

1977, 26). This practice incorporated

Wagner's "blood" imagery by viewing meat eating as contaminating because animal blood was mixed with Aryan racial

blood (Waite 1977, 26). Hitler hired a

vegetarian cook (Payne 1960, 566) and

became very critical of others who were not vegetarian, sometimes referring to

meat broth eaten by others as "corpse

tea" (Waite 1977, 19). On one romantic date, his female companion ordered

sausage, at which Hitler looked disgusted

and said: "Go ahead and have it, but I

don't understand why you want it. I didn't

think you wanted to devour a corpse . .

the flesh of dead animals. Cadavers!"

(Waite 1977, 19). The vegetarianism of

other Germans was a fad spawned. by

Hitler's preferences (Stone 1980, 62).

Rudolf Hess, for instance, was not only a vegetarian, but a nonsmoker and non-

drinker. Reportedly, he was so worried about the food he ate with Hitler in the Chancellery that he would bring his own

vegetarian food in containers, defending his practice by saying that his food

had to contain "biologically dynamic ingredients" (Marvell and Fraenkel 1971,

64). Hitler, following Wagner, attributed

much of the decay of civilization to meat eating. Among the many ideas that the

dictator adopted from the composer was a belief that civilization could be

regenerated through vegetarianism. Hitler

would not touch meat, not out of con-

siderations of health but of "absolute

conviction" that decadence "had its origin

in the abdomen—chronic constipation,

poisoning of the juices, and the results of drinking to excess" (Rauschning 1940).

Decay resulting from constipation was

something that in his mind could be avoided by not eating anything resembling feces and by purging often.

Several entries in Goebbels' diaries un-derscore the notion that vegetarianism symbolized a higher state of humanity to which Nazis aspired. In one entry, Goeb-bels observed that "He [Hitler] believes that meat-eating is harmful to humanity ... It is actually true that the great majority of humanity is living a vegetarian life and

that the animals that live on plants have

much greater powers of. resistance than those that feed on meat" (Lochner 1948,

188). In another entry, Goebbels noted: "At table the Fuhrer makes another strong plea for vegetarianism. I consider his views correct. Meat-eating is a perversion in our human nature. When we reach a higher

level of civilisation, we shall doubtless overcome it" (Taylor 1983, 6). In another

entry, Goebbels observed that Christianity

was a "symptom of decay" because it did not advocate vegetarianism:

The Fuhrer is deeply religious, though com-pletely anti-Christian. He views Christianity as a symptom of decay. Rightly so. It is a branch of the Jewish race. This can be seen in the similarity of religious rites. Both [Judaism and Christianity] have no point of contact to the animal element, and thus, in the end, they will be destroyed. The Fuhrer is a convinced vegetarian, on principle. His arguments cannot be refuted on any serious basis. They are totally unanswerable (Taylor 1983, 77).

Identification with animals by elite Nazi

figures was often paired with their con-

tempt for humanity, perhaps suggesting a

psychological explanation for the coexis-

tence of animal protection with human cruelty. Characterizations of Hitler's per-sonality portray him as having contempt

and fear of humans but compassion and

warmth for animals. Toland (1976, 425)

notes that it became known in the Third Reich that Hitler had a deep affection "for all dumb creatures," but very little for men

and women. "It was as though since the Viennese days he had turned away from the human race, which had failed to live up to his expectations and was therefore damned. At the heart of the mystery of Hitler was his fear and contempt of people." Similarly, Payne (1960, 461) ob-

serves that Hitler felt closer to and more

compassion for certain animals than people, when it came to their suffering.

Payne (1960, 461) reports that a German

pilot recalled that "Hitler saw films given to him by a friendly maharaja. During the scenes showing men savagely torn to pieces by animals, he remained calm and alert. When the films showed animals being hunted, he would cover his eyes

with his hands and asked to be told when it was all over. Whenever he saw a

wounded animal, he wept." He hated

people who engaged in blood sports, and several times he said it would give him the greatest pleasure to murder anyone who killed an animal.

Similarly, while Goebbels' attitude toward humans was contemptuous, his expressed attitude toward his pet dog was

loving. Goebbels' diary entries, especially those written in the mid-1920s, were ex-plicit about this split in feelings. Goebbels revealed:

As soon as I am with a person for three days,

I don't like him any longer; and if I am with him for a whole week, I hate him like the

plague ... I have learned to despise the

human being from the bottom of my soul. He makes me sick in my stomach, Phoeey! ... Much dirt [gossip] and many intrigues. The human being is a canaille [riff raff but also pack of dogs] ... The only real friend one has in the end is the clog ... The more I get to know the human species, the more

! care for my Benno [his pet dog; (Lochner 1948, 8).

Certainly, Hitler and Goebbels were not the only members of the German Nazi elite to identify with animals, express com-passion for them, and praise traits in them such as obedience and aggressiveness while simultaneously showing contempt for humanity. Rudolf Hess, for instance, had a pet wolfhound named (-lasso (Leasor 1962, 86). Floss, the commander of Auschwitz, was a "great lover" of animals, particularly horses. After a hard

clay of work at the camp, he "found relief

walking through the stables at night" (Glaser 1978, 240). Eduard Wirth, a prominent physician at Auschwitz, had

three pet dogs at one point. When two became ill, he referred to one of his rooms

as their "sick ward." When his favorite dog died, he wrote sadly to his wife of its death,

noting that the dog "suffered a lot so I gave him morphine ... It is good that he dies; he was in the end blind in both eyes" (Litton 1986, 397, 399).

Psychological assessments of the per-sonalities of a number of leading Nazi

political figures also show evidence of dis-

tancing from humans and interest in animals. In one study (Miale and Selzer 1975), Rorschach tests were administered to Nazi prisoners of war. Results indicated several departures from "normal" test find-

ings, with subjects seeing themselves as

animals or subhuman in the Rorschach

more often that controls. Half the subjects depicted themselves, or aspects of them-selves, as animals (typically unevolved,

low-level bugs, beetles, or insects); six of the subjects also offered self-portraits of themselves as subhuman or inhuman

figures such as gremlins. Miale and Selzer (1975, 276) contend that the respondents' animal responses had a "lack of vitality" indicating that this group was "cut off from

their vital impulses and were unable to be free and spontaneous. Their antisocial at-

titudes were not expressions of normal impulses, but rather of the repression and distortion of these impulses." In short, the findings suggested that, on the whole, these men had an "incapacity to feel human feelings" (Miale and Selzer 1975,

282). Dicks' (1972) research also found those Nazis studied to be "affectionless and lacking deep positive relations to

human figures."

The German—Animal Alliance

Against Jews and Others

National Socialist propaganda often

portrayed Germany as a woman figure at one with nature but exploited and op-

pressed by demonic Bolsheviks, capi-

talists, and Jews (Fest 1970; Lane and

Rupp 1978). These victimizers were seen

as endangering the purity of the German "blood" and "spirit." Animals, too, were

being victimized by these oppressors, whether by slaughtering them according to kosher law or by using them as subjects in scientific experiments. Metaphorically,

only a subtle difference separated the animal from the German victim in this struggle. By allying themselves closely to

animals in their pursuit of animal protec-tion, the hated "vivisector" became synonymous with the Jew, enemy of both

animals and of Germans. Animal protec-

tion measures, then, may have served as a legal vehicle to express these anti-Semitic feelings.

Laws passed by the Nazis on April 21,

1933, to regulate butchering were not

only a measure for the protection of animals. They also constituted a barely concealed attack on the Jews, whose

"ritualistic slaughter" was characterized as "torment of animals." The preamble to the

laws stated:

1 he animals protection movement, strongly promoted by the National Socialist govern-ment, has long demanded that animals be given anesthesia before being killed. The overwhelming majority of the German people have long condemned killing

„without anesthesia, a practice universal among Jews though not confined to them, ... as against the cultivated sensitivities of our society (Giese and Kat)ler 1944).

The discussion that followed contained many further references to the horrors allegedly found in kosher butcher shops. 7

The German movement against animal experimentation was also, from its incep-tion, strongly associated with anti -Semi-

tism. 8 In a decree issued on August 17, 1933, Hermann Goring, then chairman of the Prussian ministry, proclaimed that people "foreign" or "alien" to Germany viewed the animal as "a dead thing under-the law ..." He declared:

I ... will commit to concentration camps those who still think they can continue to treat animals as inanimate property ... The fairy tales and sagas of the Nordic people, especially the German people, show the spirit of close contact, which all Aryan people possess, with the animals. It is the more incomprehensible, therefore, that jus-tice, up to now, did not agree with the spirit of the people on this point as it did on many others. Under the influence of foreign [i.e., Jewish] conceptions of justice and a strange comprehension of law, through the unhap-py fact that the exercise of justice was in the hands of people alien to the nation ... the animal was considered a dead thing under the law . . . This does not correspond to the German spirit and most decidedly it does not conform to the ideas of national socialism (Goring 1939).

The statement is particularly noteworthy,

since the very existence of concentration

camps was generally not acknowledged at the time.

Nazi ideologues sought to link the his-tory of Judaism to vivisection. The revela-tion of Abraham and Moses was understood as the dominant tradition of

the Occident, which culminated in the

industrial revolution and the human domination of nature.`' The word

"vivisection" (the same in German as in

English) was often used broadly to refer to

dispassionate dissection and analysis. For example, Wilhelm Stapel, a conservative

writer of the Weimar Republic, noted that

"more important than all the vivisection of intellectualism is the growth of a national myth ... that blossoms forth from the

blood" (Craig 1982). Judaism, in both ac-

tual and symbolic ways, was understood

as the tradition of "vivisection." 10 Nazi

racial theorists regularly contrasted the

supposedly cold, analytic mentality of the

Jew, with that of "Nordic man," who, they

claimed, understood things organically as part of the natural world (Giesler 1938;

Proctor 1988). The anti-Semitism of the Nazis was a

very radical form of an idea that is still familiar: that Jews and, by association, Christians had scorned the natural world. Some of the Nazis such as chief ideologist

Alfred Rosenberg rejected Christianity as

a sect of Judaism, and others tried to purify

Christianity of its Jewish heritage (Mosse

1966). As a result, the distinction between Christianity and paganism in Nazi Ger-

many grew increasingly unclear (Glaser

1978).

The link between animal protection and

anti-Semitism is paradoxical, since the Old

Testament celebrates animals with great passion and eloquence. Nevertheless, such an association may go back very far. In the fourteenth century, Geoffrey Chaucer satirized it in his Canterbury Tales.

When the prioress is introduced, we are

told how well she fed her hounds and how

she would weep at the sight of a mouse

caught in a trap. But this same prioress

uses her tale for a furious attack on Jews,

accusing them of ritual murder of children (Chaucer 1969). More recently, in the mid-

nineteenth century, philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1903) held that Jewish traditions were responsible for a view of animals as things.

The key figure in promoting this associa-tion in Germany was the composer Richard Wagner. Long after he died, his writing continued to have considerable impact on German thought. He drama-tized his ideas respecting race and animal protection in the opera Parsifal and his

prose would sometimes contain imagery featuring "blood," of a sort that was con-

stantly used in the rhetoric of Hitler and his followers (Craig 1982). in a letter of August, 1879, to Ernst von Weber, the founder of the Dresden Animal Protection Society and author of the influential Die Folterkammern der Wissenschaft (The Tor-

ture Chambers of Science), Wagner stated:

Until now I have respected the activities of such societies, but always regretted that their educational contact with the general public has rested chiefly upon a demonstra-tion of the usefulness of animals, and the uselessness of persecuting them. Although it may be useful to speak to the unfeeling populace in this way, I none the less thought it opportune to go a stage further here and appeal to their fellow feeling as a basis for ultimately ennobling Christianity. One must begin by drawing people's attention to animals and reminding them of the Brahman's great saying "Tat twain asi" ("That art thou"]—even though it will be difficult to make acceptable to the modern world of Old Testament Judaization [the spread of Jewish blood and influence]. However, a start must be made here —since the commandment to love thy neighbor is becoming more and more questionable and difficult to observe—particularly in the

face of our vivisectionist friends (Wagner

1987).

Like Goring (1939) and others who would

come later, Wagner identified vivisec-

tionists with Jews. A much expanded version of this letter

was published under the title "Offenes Schreiben an Ernst von Weber" (Open Letter to Ernst von Weber) and dated Oc-tober, 1879. The revision was even more

emotional in tone. Wagner supported breaking into laboratories where experi-ments on animals were conducted, as well as physical attacks on vivisectionists. He closed with the melodramatic declaration that, should the campaign against vivisec-

tion prove unsuccessful, he would gladly depart from a world in which "no dog would any longer wish to live," "even if no

'Requiem for Germany' is played after us" (Wagner 1888b). With Wagner's public and financial support and von Weber's

skillful leadership, the Dresden Animal

Protection Society soon became the cen-ter of the German antivivisection move-ment (Trohler and Maehle 1987).

As illustrated by the quotation from Wagner's original letter, anti-Semitic rhetoric in German suggested that per-secution of Jews was sometimes per-

ceived as revenge on behalf of aggrieved

animals. Jews were identified as enemies of animals and implicitly Germans. In Wagner's outrage against the use of frogs

in experiments, he explicitly identified "vivisectors" as "enemies." Vivisection of frogs was "the curse of our civilization," according to Wagner. He urged the Volk to rid itself of scientists and rescue the frog martyrs. Viereck (1965, 108) maintains that Wagner created "a sort of moral Armageddon" between those "who free

trussed animals" and those "who truss them to torture them." Those who fail to un truss frogs were "enemies of the state."

After the death of Wagner in 1883, his followers, such as the brothers Bernard and Paul Forstner, continued the anti-Semitic campaign against vivisection. The

latter became editor of Thier-und

Menschenfreund (Friend to Animals and Man), the journal of the Dresden Animal Protection Society. Wagner's admirers in the twentieth century included such spokesmen for anti-Semitism as Houston

Stewart Charhberlain, Alfred Rosenberg,

and, most significantly, Adolf Hitler (Katz

1986).

Another close associate of von Weber

who added prestige to the movement against vivisection was Friedrich Zenner, a famous though controversial professor

of astrophysics (Bretschneider 1962). In

a popular book entitled Ober den wis-senschaftlichen Missbrauch der Vivisection (On the Scientific Misuse of Vivisection),

first published in 1880, Zollner launched

a counterattack against the physi-ologists. In its inaugural issue the British magazine Animal's . Defender and Zoophilist (published by an antivivisec-tion society) ran a highly favorable critique

of ZoIlner's book, offering the following summary:

Zollner who is a patriotic admirer of Bk-

mark ... agrees with the men of Bayreuth [followers of Wagner] in demanding an in-tellectual, moral and aesthetic regeneration of the German people. The press being in the hands of clever and ambitious Jews, and the teachings at universities being, explicitly or implicitly, atheistic, Professor Zollner has no difficulty in tracing many of evils just mentioned [suicide, crime, usury, swindling

and just about everything else] to the un-congenial influences of Judaism and Materialism. It would be wrong to say that

vivisection is a Jewish pursuit, yet medicine

is, in Germany at least, an eminently Jewish profession, and the press being still more Jewish than the medical career, the difficul-

ty of denouncing medical abuses or vivisec-

tional brutalities is considerably greater

than in any other country (Anonymous 1881).

The association between anti-Semitism and vivisection was not confined to Ger-

many. It was also strong in Switzerland

(Neff 1989), and the British reviewer ob-viously shared Zollner's anti-Semitic views. The latter, however, sometimes expressed

them in a particularly extreme manner, maintaining that Jews were by nature cal-

lous and bloodthirsty. Zollner, for example, attacked a Jewish

zoologist named Semper, accusing him of showing gross insensitivity (a "thick skin" like that of an elephant) by hunting the birds that attacked his botanical gardens,

with the following sarcastic remarks:

[O]ne would be justified in describing the anti -Semitic movement that has just recent-ly appeared in Germany not as "persecu-tion of Jews" but metaphorically as a "hunt for elephants." Because surely Professor Semper would recognize a right to hunt not only thrushes but also elephants if they broke into his garden and laid waste to the

"garden for alpine plants and herbs con-

structed at considerable cost" with their crude feet. If one now compares Semper's garden in Wurzburg with Germany and the

expense of the alpine plants and ferns with the "considerable costs" of maintaining the

universities, then the German people have

the same right to hunt over-educated, Semi-tic "elephants" as Semper does to hunt the thrushes (Zollner 1885).

The reversal of roles between hunter and

animal is an old motif (Sax 1990) that

appears frequently in literature against

misuse of animals.

Although Z011ner did not unequivocally

advocate physical attacks on Jews, this

passage is an anticipation of the Nazi per-

secutions. Despite what the quotation sug-

gests, Zoliner seems to have been far less a vicious man than a complacent one. Confident that concern for animals proved his moral superiority, he could, elsewhere in his book, content himself with the most abstract expressions of compassion for the Jews. Many of his attitudes were later adopted by Nazi doctors; who attempted

to purify medicine of "Jewish" influence (Proctor 1988).

Animals, People, and the New

Natural Order

While stressing the biological distinctions among types of human beings, the Nazis

saw human life as part of the larger biologi-cal order that they sought to create. As part of this order, all human life, including Ger-

mans, were treated as animals. In the case of Geri -flans themselves, they were regarded as livestock to breed the purest biological forms; non-Aryans were viewed as pests that could contaminate the racial purity so important to National Socialist aims. Such treatment of humans as animals was another reason why the com-bination of animal protection measures

with cruelty toward humans may not have seemed so paradoxical to Germans. By animalizing human life, moral distinctions

between people and animals were obliterated, making it possible to treat

animals as well as humans, and humans as poorly as animals.

In Mythos, a book intended to have virtually scriptural authority within the Nazi movement, Alfred Rosenberg (1935) found it terribly ironic that more -concern was shown about the racial pedigree of

horses and donkeys than of human beings. To correct this, the National Socialists

treated Germans themselves, in the most literal sense, as animals. Just as the breed-ing stock of "less pure" animals had been improved, so too was the "pure blood" of

Germans to be restored. According to Darr& "As we have restored our old

Hanoverian horse from less pure male and

female animals by selective breeding, we will also, in the course of generations,

again selectively breed the pure type of the

nordic German from the finest German bloodlines ..." (Glaser 1978, 154).

Several leading Germans used their ex-perience in farming, as well as their train-

ing in agriculture and veterinary medicine, to pursue this goal. For example, Martin

Bormann had been an agricultural student

and in 1920 became the manager of a

large farm (McGovern 1968, 11-12). The new rector of the University of Berlin in the

mid-1930s was by profession a veteri-

narian. He instituted 25 new courses in Rassenkunde—racial science—and by the

time he finished rewriting the curriculum had instituted 86 courses connected to veterinary sciences as applied to humans

(Shirer 1960, 250). And for a period of time in the 1920s, Himmler was a chicken

breeder (Fest 1970, 1 1 6). Thus, veterinary

medicine and agricultural science became the means of teaching racial doctrine in

German universities (Bendersky 1985,

156). Indeed, National Socialism viewed Europe, including Germany, "as if it were a thoroughly neglected animal farm which

urgently needed the elimination of racially

poor and unhealthy stock, better breeding

methods, etc. All of Europe and the East

were finally to make biological sense"

(Maltitz 1973, 289).

Much of Himmler's knowledge about animal breeding practices was directly ap-

plied to plans for human breeding to fur-ther Aryan traits (Bookbinder 1989). One

of Himmler's obsessions was the breeding of many more superior Nordic offspring

(Shirer 1960, 984). Financial awards were

made for giving birth if the child was of biological and racial value, and potential

mothers of imorl Aryan stock who did not

give birth were branded as "un-wholesome, traitors and criminals" (Deuel 1942, 164-65). Encouraging the propaga-

tion of good German blood was seen as so important that several Nazi leaders ad-vocated free love in special recreation

camps for girls with pure Aryan qualities. In one of Himmler's schemes, he argued that if 100 such camps were established for 1000 girls, 10,000 "perfect" children would be born each year (Deuel 1942,

165). Despite the criticism of the Reich Minis-

ter of the Interior, who opposed the "idea of breeding Nordics" when it reached the point of "making a rabbit-breeding farm out of Germany" (Deuel 1942, 203), plans were developed for a series of state-run brothels, where young women certified as genetically sound would be impregnated

by Nazi men. The intent was to breed

Aryans as if they were pedigreed dogs

(Glaser 1978). From a eugenic point of view, a weak animal will probably be of little use, no matter what the species.

Young German women chosen to breed with specia•lly selected good biological

German male stock had their infants im-mediately taken away from them and put outside, unprotected, to see if they would survive in order to weed out inferior stock (Galley 1990).

Other proposals and policies reflected a similar view of the German people as

livestock to be improved through proper

breeding. Laws passed to regulate mar-riage were based on "racial blood"; the

goal was to prevent contamination of Ger-manic blood such that children born in Germany would be either purely Jewish or purely non -Jewish (Deuel 1942, 217). Even selection for membership in certain Nazi organizations, such as Himmler's SS, emphasized pure Aryan qualities, the ob-ject being to draw the sons of the best genetic families into Nazi ranks.

Preference was given to those applicants having a certified family tree extending five

or six generations, blond hair, blue eyes,

and a height of six feet. They were to become the biological elite, the most pure Germans (Bayles 1940, 155). One

proposal (Gasman 1971) suggested send-ing biologically unfit Germans into battle so that biologically superior individuals

could be preserved for reproduction. Medical research under the Third Reich

also approached Germans as livestock.

For instance, those familiar with Mengele's concentration camp experiments believed

that his thoughtlessness for the suffering of his victims stemmed from his passion about creating a genetically pure super-race "as though you were breeding horses" (Posner and Ware 1986, 42 - 43).

The principal purpose of his experiments

was to discover the secret of creating mul-

tiple births with genetically engineered Aryan features and improve the fertility of

German women as well as find efficient

and easy ways to mass sterilize "inferior

races" (Posner and Ware 1986, 31). While the German people themselves

were dealt with as biological stock or farm

animals, certain groups of people con-sidered contaminating or threatening to German blood and culture were viewed as "lower animals" to be dispatched ac-cordingly. When it came to discussing the goal of selecting out "inferior" races from

the world's breeding stock, the language

used is full of references to contamination

from contact with others considered dirty

or polluting. Hitler referred to race "poisoning," and others used terms such as "race defilement" and "corruption,"

"decay," "rot," or "decomposition" of

German "blood" (Weinstein 1980, 136)

to refer to everything from innocent ac-

quaintanceships to sexual relations with Jews (Deuel 1942, 210-11) and contact with their "harmful animal serum" (Brady

1-969, 53). Even animals owned by Jews

were seen as racially contaminating to other animals. Viereck (1965, 254) cites the case of a German mayor who decreed that in order to further race purity, "cows

and cattle which were brought from Jews,

directly or indirectly, may not be bred with the community bull."

Those peoples deemed genetically con-

taminating were thought of and treated as animals. Such animal-labeling of people,

typically emphasizing beastly or wild in-stincts, was not confined to Jews. "Foreign workers" were "pigs, dogs, they are crea-tures who are the counterfeits of human

beings" (Grunberger 1971, 166). An SS

propaganda booklet, The Subhuman, described all peoples of the "East" as

"animalistic trash, to be exterminated"

(Herzstein 1978, 365). Russian soldiers were a "conglomeration of animals"

(Lochner 1948, 206), "unrestrained beasts" and "wild animals" (Maltitz 1973,

61) and had "primitive anima lity" (Herzstein 1978, 357). Even the Rumanian peasants, allies of the Germans, were described as "miserable pieces of cattle" (Maltitz 1973, 61).

When groups of people, most common-

ly Jews, were likened to specific animal species, it was usually "lower" animals or

life forms, including rodents, reptiles, in-

sects, or germs. Hitler (1938), for instance,

called the Jews a "pack of rats," and Him-

mler, in order to help soldiers cope with

having just shot one hundred Jews, told them "bedbugs and rats have a life pur-pose ... but this has never meant that man could not defend himself against vermin" (Hilberg 1961, 219). The propaganda - film Triumph of the Will superimposed images

of rats over presumed "degenerate

people" such as the Jews, and the 1940 film The Eternal Jew portrayed Jews as lower than vermin, somewhat akin to the rat—filthy, corrupting, disease carrying,

ugly, and group oriented (Herzstein 1978,

309). Weinstein (1980, 141) reports that because Jews were thought to be like

chameleons—able to merge with their sur-roundings—they were made to wear the

yellow Star of David so innocent Aryans

would not be contaminated by the unwit-ting contact. Jews were also likened to bacteria and "plagues" of insects

(Herzstein 1978, 354). If in creating the human animal, insuffi-

cient distance was created from the pure German, there was also the notion of "un-termenschen," or subhumans, lower than animals. As described in one SS docu-

ment:

The subhuman—that creation of nature, which biologically is seemingly quite identi-cal with the human, with hands, feet, and a kind of brain, with eyes and a mouth—is nevertheless a totally different and horrible creature, is merely an attempt at beirig man—but mentally and emotionally on a far lower level than any animal. In the inner life of that person there is a cruel chaos of wild

uninhibited passions: a nameless urge to destroy, the most primitive lust, undisguised baseness ... But the subhuman lived, too ... He associated with his own kind. The beast called the beast ... And this under-world of subhumans found its leader: the eternal Jew! (Maltitz 1973, 61-62).

Thus, the evolution of the notion of the human animal was to develop into an even lower and more distant (i.e., more dangerous. in terms of pollution) form of

life, the subhuman. This was the final twist

on the Nazi phylogenetic inversion. Aryans and certain animals symbolized purity and were above human animals that

were a contaminant involving impure

"races" and "lower" animal species; the

subhumans were below everything. Hitler,

in fact, came to believe that Jews, as sub- .

humans, were biologically demonic. He

speculated that they descended from beings that "must have been veritable devils" and that it was only "in the course of centuries" that they had "taken on a human look" (Hitler 1938) through inter-

breeding with Aryans. As the personifica-tion of the devil, Jews, to Hitler, were the main danger to the purity of the Aryan world (Staudinger 1 98 1 ). Himmler, also buying into the notion of the subhuman, had studies made of the skulls of "Jewish-Bolshevik commissars" in order to arrive at a typological definition of the "subhuMan" (Fest 1970, 113).

When coupled with a desire for racial

purity, the conception of certain people as

animal-like may have facilitated ex-

perimentation on concentration camp in-

mates as though they were as expendable as laboratory rats. At the RavensbrUck con-

centration camp for women, hundreds of

Polish inmates—the "rabbit girls" they were called—were given gas gangrene

wounds while others were subjected to

"experiments in bone grafting" (Shirer 1960, 979). In some -cases, concentration

camp inmates were substituted for animals before human trials would normal-ly occur. For example, in 1941 Himmler

approved use of camp inmates in a

sterilization study of a plant extract based on premature findings from rodent re-

search, and in 1943 he authorized the reversal of a research study on jaundice that formerly injected healthy animals with virus from jaundiced humans so that humans could be injected with virus from diseased animals (Hilberg 1961, 601-602, 604). More typical were medical experi-

ments on people that had not even been tried previously on animals. Experimenters

such as Mengele referred to camp inmates as human "material" and their body parts as "war materials" (Posner and Ware

1986, 17, 39). At Belsen, staff viewed their work in terms of how many "pieces of

prisoner per day" were handled, and let-ters from IG-Farbenis drug research sec-tion and Auschwitz camp authorities made reference to "loads" or "consign-

ments" of human guinea pigs (Grunberger

1971, 330).

Conceiving of certain people as animal-like also facilitated their execution. Those

deemed "unfit" or "unworthy" of life were

considered "degenerate" and if permitted

to breed, they would only contaminate

German stock and reduce its physical,

mental, and moral purity (Deuel 1942, 221, 225). Hence, the need for "hygienic

prophylaxis" (Herzstein 1 978, 66). Jews,

in particular, were viewed as "breeders of

almost all evil" (Shirer 1960, 250). The

expectation was that those humans

deemed polluting and dangerous

"racially" would be eliminated through a

program of euthanasia, "mercy killing," or

"Gnadentod" for those with "lives not

worth living" (Lifton 1986; Proctor 1 988),

a notion that is strikingly similar to the

1933 animal protection regulation regard-ing euthanasia. The first to be given a "mercy death" were incurably insane per-sons or deformed infants (Milberg 1961,

561; Peukert 1987) under a 1939 plan that became known as the "euthanasia pro-

gram." The killing was then extended to

older children. Ironically, Jewish children

were at first excluded from the killing.

According to the bizarre, dreamlike logic

of the National Socialists, Jews did not deserve such an "act of mercy" (Proctor

1988). The Holocaust was eventually

broadened to include Jews, Gypsies, al-

coholics, homosexuals, criminals, and al-

most anyone else the regime objected to.

Extermination of humans considered to be contaminating extended beyond the kill-

ing of millions in concentration camps. By

giving only limited medical and dental

care, and encouraging abortions, the em-

1.-)ire envisioned by the Nazis would not maintain native populations, such as those in Southern Russia. It was a philosophy of utter contempt and revulsion for those

thought of, in Himmler's terms, as "these human animals" (Maltitz 1973, 288-89). Speaking to his SS officers, Himmler com-mented: "We Germans, who are the only ones in the world who have a decent attitude toward animals, will also show a decent attitude toward these human animals, but it would be a crime against our own blood to worry about them" (Mal-titz 1973, 41).

CONCLUSION

If the real Nazis were the comic-book

figures of popular melodramas, their

deeds would be no less horrible. The phenomenon we have examined, how-ever, would be less profoundly disturbing. Our analysis raises what is to most contem-

poraries a troubling and unsavory con-tradiction, namely, that Establishment

concern for animals in Nazi Germany was combined with disregard for human life.

This paradox vanishes, however, if we

see that the treatment of animals under the Third Reich really tells us about the treat-ment of humans and the cultural rules and problems of human society. All cultures

seek to order human existence in terms of

certain basic assumptions, including that

which is seen as pure and that as polluting.

In this conceptual apparatus shared by all

cultures, things considered to be con-

tagions become dangers that have to be

contained in order to protect what is per-ceived to be pure. By containing the danger of pollution,. people can further the

illusion of their power as they seek to

guard the ideal order of society against the dangers that threaten it. "Laws of nature" are cited to sanction the moral code and

social rules that define what is considered

to be a dangerous contagion. The elimina-tion of polluting elements may simply be

a positive effort to organize a "safe" en-

vironment by preserving the integrity of

what is considered pure. At the core of this dichotomy of purity

and danger is a design of society, or what constitutes its boundaries and margins

(Douglas 1966). In many societies, dif-

ferences between humans and other

species serve as fundamental reminders of what is considered to be pure and what is

thought to be contaminating; indeed, they define what it means to be human by maintaining reasonably clear boundaries

between humans and animals. In Nazi

Germany, however, the conception of

what it meant to be German, or pure,

relied more heavily on seeing other groups

of people as the societal danger rather

than other species. German identity was not contaminated by including within it certain animal traits or by seeing itself

closely related to animals in moral, if not

biological terms. In short, Nazi German

identity relied on the blurring of boun-daries between humans and animals and the constructing of a unique phylogenetic

hierarchy that altered conventional human-animal distinctions and impera-tives.

We saw this blurring, for example, in the

concern for animals and devotion to pets demonstrated by many prominent Nazi

Germans. On the one hand, animals were

seen as "virtuous," "innocent," and em-

bodying ideal qualities absent in most

humans. Indeed, to hunt or eat animals

was itself defiling, a sign of "decay" and perversion. People, on the other hand, were seen with "contempt," "fear," and

"disappointment." In fact, to kill certain

people furthered the Nazi quest for purity.

We also saw this blurring in the alliance of Germans with animals against their "op-

pressors," Jews and others labeled as

"vivisectors" and "torturers." In facing a •

•

common danger, Germans likened them-

selves, as "victims," to animals and dis-

tanced themselves from human

"victimizers." Finally, we saw this blurring

in the animalization of Germans them-

selves as well as other humans. To cope

with their greatest threat, the "genetic

pollution" of a pure, holistic, natural

people, Germans were encouraged to fight for their survival with the same unfeel-

ing determination as any species of life. As

part of the natural order, Germans of Aryan stock were to be .bred like farm stock while "lower animals" or "sub-humans," such as the Jews and other vic-

tims of the Holocaust, were to be

exterminated like vermin as a testament to

the new "natural" and biological order

conceived under the Third Reich.

From this perspective, the paradox

noted above fades. What contemporaries would consider cruel and inhumane be-

havior toward categories of people was seen in Nazi Germany as acceptable be-

havior toward polluted "lower" humans.

What contemporaries would regard as in-

consistently humane behavior toward animals, in light of the treatment of certain human groups, was seen in Nazi Germany

as quite consistent given the consan-

guinity (in holistic, pure Nature) of certain

"higher" humans and animals. The

Holocaust itself may have depended on

this unique cultural conception of what it

meant to be human in relation to animals.

NOTES

1. The conventional translation of "raubtier" is "beast," but a more exact one would be "predator" or "carnivore." The Nazis, in iden-

tifying with predators celebrated in heraldry, were aligning themselves with warn lots of old. While predatory instincts were praiseworthy in

Germans, they were criticized in Jews. While

visiting Munich in 1935, Craig (1952) reports

that head gauleiter Julius Streicher offered

"scientific evidence of the predatory nature of

the Jews, at one point arguing insistently that,

if one were attentive while visiting zoos, one

would note that the blond-haired German

children always played happily in sandboxes

while the swarthy Jewish children sat expec-

tantly before the cages of beasts of prey, seek-ing vicarious satisfaction of their blood-tainted

lusts."

2. Attachment to dogs also served to tie Nazi

Germany to the rural glorification of its Roman-

tic past. It became important to portray Ger-

man leaders as close to nature and having

values compatible with a simple agricultural way of life; the soil was seen as the source of life and inspiration. Old Germans, Flimmlei argued, were nature worshipers, and so too should be new Germans, who he tried to sell

on the nobility and virtues of farm life (Deuel

1942, 162-63). Conipanionship with dogs

provided a link between the soil and humanity.

A great deal was written about Hitler's fond-

ness for dogs during the 1930s and 1940s, and many pictures were taken to prove it was so as

part of a propaganda campaign to demonstrate ,l-litler's "modesty and simplicity," which ac-cording to Langer were key values behind rural

glorification (1972, 56). One example of such a propaganda photo appears in Toland (1976, 341) of Hitler and "two friends" (two dogs), and another appears in Maltitz (1973, 232e) of

Hitler relaxing with a clog.

3. A number of prominent Nazis also had animal

nicknames. Martin Borman!) was known as the

"bull" because of his short thick neck; Klaus l3arbie was known as "gorilla ears" in refer ence

to the simian shape of his ears (Murphy 1983,

36); and Goebbels was called "Mickey Mouse" (Grunberger 1971, 335). Even special preferences in art often demonstrated 1-litler's particular interest in animals. His favorite paint-

ing, for instance, was Correggio's "Leda and the Swan"; the swan is central to the painting and is in interaction with a female. Goebbels' favorite painting was Boecklin's "Sport of the

Waves," which shows half human and animal characters of mermaids and mermen (11anfstaengl 1957, 63).

4. The only headquarters not named after wolves was still nained after an animal. According to

Toland (1976, 532), I - litter's other headquarters in 1940 was called the Eagle's Eyrie.

5. 1 lermann Goring was the only member of the

general staff who was a devotee of hunting, and even in his case, he expressed marked

• I 4

' V •

interest and caring (or companion animals and

animals in general. Goring was widely known

to be unusually fond of and dedicated to several pet adult lions kept at his estate. Ac-cording to Irving (1989, 180), chief ((Nester Ulrich Scherping claimed that those who saw Goring with his lions could sense the fondness that they had for each other. He was, however,

also a driven hunter, a fact that bothered Hitler, who called Goring's hunting associates "that green freemasonry." So involved with his hunt-ing expeditions, Goring kept extensive hunting diaries interspersed with notes of diplomatic

and political meetings at hunts. Goring also

considered being a good hunter necessary for

promotion in the Luftwaffe.

6. Although a belief in Wagner's argument is the

most persuasive and common explanation for

Hitler's vegetarianism, several other attempts

to explain this vegetarianism have been made.

There is at least one instance (Huss 1942, 405)

where Hitler's diet was attributed to his inability

to tolerate the thought of animals being

slaughtered for human consumption. For

Langer (1972, 56) such an "animal person"

account was a deliberate portrayal of Hitler as

kind and gentle. Both accounts can be con-

sidered plausible, one having more to do with

individual motivation, the other with portrayal

and use in a wider, propaganda sense. Langer

(1972, 191) also suggests !hall-litter only be-

came a real vegetarian after the death of his niece. In clinical practice, one often finds com-

pulsive vegetarianism occurring after the death

of a loved one. Another writer maintains that his vegetarianism was due to chronic indiges-tion and the medical necessity to avoid meat (Bayles 1940, 47).

7. Accounts from this period of kosher butchering

as a form of ritualistic torture resemble other slanders that have been used against the Jews,

such as the kidnapping and murder of children

or the killing of Christ. Cultural attitudes tend

to find expression in common symbols, even

when the views are never made explicit. The connection between the previously mentioned

accusations against Jews and kosher butcher-ing must sometimes have been reinforced by Christian symbolism, where Christ is repre-

sented by the sacrificial lamb. 8. The anti -Semitic basis of Nazi antivivisection

was popularly known and apparently

embraced by the citizenry, as suggested in the

following anecdote. During one study course

arranged by the party, a lady lecturer had told

in ail. seriousness of her .experience with a

talking dog. When asked "Who is Adolf Hit-

ler?" the dog replied, "Mein fuhrer." The lec-

turer was interrupted by an indignant Nazi who

shouted that it was abominable taste to relate such a ridiculous story. The lecturer, on the verge of tears, replied, "1 his clever animal

knows that Adolf Hitler has caused laws to be passed against vivisection and the Jews' ritual

slaughter of animals, and out of gratitude this small canine brain recognized Adolf Hitler as hiS Fuhrer" (Toland 1976, 528).

9. This is not to say that the Nazis were against technology. They took pride in feats of en-gineering such as the construction of the

autobahn (Giesler 1938). In many ways, they

carried technocratic control to a unique ex-

treme. Hitler (1938) himself often invoked the

ideal of "progress." But the movement also

exploited a longing for a simpler, preindustrial

way of life. The Nazis wished to take full credit

for the advantage of technology, while using

Jews as scapegoats for the accompanying

problems. 10. While the vivisectionist was explicitly identified

with the Jew, vivisectionist imagery was also

used to express the Romantic critique of

society. For Wagner and others, animals were

dynamic and sacred expressions of life that

should not be destroyed politically by the

atomis tic state, mentally by analysis, or physi-

cally by vivisection. In at least one case, Wag-ner used vivisectionist imagery to attack the

uninspired "dusty office desks" of government bureaucracies that he described as "modern

torture-rooms ... between files of documents

and contracts, the hearts of live humanity arc

pressed like gathered leaves" (Viereck 1965,

109).

REFERENCES

AMA. 1933. New regulations concerning vivisec-

tion. Journal of the American Medical Association 102(14)1087.

Anonymous. 1881. Review of Ober den wis-senschafilichen Missbrauch der Vivisection by

Friedrich Zollner. Animal's Defender and Zonphilist (1):27 - 28.

Barnard, N. 1990. The Nazi experiments. The Animal's Agenda April:8 - 9.

Bayles, W. 1940. Caesars in goosestep. New York:

Harper.

Bendersky, J. 1985. A history of Nazi Germany.

Chicago: Nelson•I

-

Bookbinder, P. 1909. Personal communication. Brady, R. 1969. The spirit and structure of German

fascism. New York: Howard Fertig. Bramwell, A. 1989. Ecology in the 20th century: A

history. New Haven: Yale University Press. Bretschneider, H. 1962. ller Streit urn die Vivisek-

tion im 19. Jahrhundert. Stuttgart: Gustav Fischer. , Bromberg, N., and V. Small. 1983. Hitler's psycho-

pathology. New York: International Universities Press.

Chaucer, G. 1969. Complete works, ed. W. Skeat. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Craig, G. 1982. The Germans. New York: New American Library.

Deuel, W. 1942. People under Hitler. New York: 1-larcourt, Brace.

Dicks, H. 1972. Licensed mass Murder. New York: Basic Books.

Douglas, M. 1966. Purity and danger: An analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. Baltimore: Pen-guin.

Fest, J. 1970. The face of the Third Reich. New York: Pantheon. . 1975. Hitler. New York: Vintage. Galley, C. 1990. Personal communication. Gasman, D. 1971. The scientific origins of National

Socialism: Social Darwinism in Ernst Haeckel and the German Monist League. New York: American Elsevier.

Giese, C., and D. Kahler, 1944. Das deutsche Tierschutzrecht: Bestimmungen zum Schutze der Tiere. Berlin: Duncker and Humbolt.

Giesler, A. 1938. Biotechnik. Leipzig: Quelle and Meher.

Glaser, 1-1. 1978. The cultural roots of National Socialism. Austin: University of Texas Press.

GOring, H. 1939. The political testament of Hermann Goring. Translated by 1-1. W. Blood-Ryan. Lon-don: John Lang.

Grunberger, R. 1971. A social history of the 7 bird Reich. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

Hanfstaengl, E. 1957. Unheard witness. Philadel-phia: J. B. Lippincott.

1 - lerzstein, R. 1978. The war that Hitler won. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Hilberg, R. 1961. The destruction of the European Jews. Chicago: Quadrangle.

Hitler, A. 1938. Mein Kampf. Munich: Franz Eher. Hoelscher, H. 1949. Tierschutz und Strafrecht. Doc-

toral dissertation, University of 1 - leidelberg. 1 - luss, P. 1942. The foe we face. Garden City, N.Y.:

Doubleday, Doran. Irving, D. 1989. G6ring. New Yolk: Morrow. Katz, J. 1986. The darker side of genius: Richard

Wagner's anti-Semitism. Hanover, N.H.: Univer- sity Press of New England (Brandeis).

Lane, B., and L. Rupp. 1978. Nazi ideology before 1933. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Langer, W. 1972. The mind of Adolf Hitler. New

York: Basic Books. Leasor, J. 1962. Rudolf Hess. London: George Allen

and Unwin. Lifton, R. 1986. The Nazi doctors. New York: Basic

Books. Lochner, L. 1948. The Goebbels diaries, 1942-1943.

Westport, Conn.: Greenwood. Maltitz, H. 1973. The evolution of Hitler's Germany.

New York: McGraw-Hill. Manvell, R., and H. Fraenkel. 1971. Hess. London:

George Allen and Unwin. McGovern, J. 1968. Martin Bormann. New York:

Morrow. Melena, E. 1877. Gemma, oder Tugend und Laster.

Munich: G. Franz. Meyer, H. 1975. Der Mensch und das Tier:

Anthropologische und kultursoziologische Aspekte. Munich: 1-leinz Moos.

Miale, F., and M. Selzer. 1975. The Nuremberg

mind. New York: Quadrangle. Mosse, G. 1966. Nazi culture: Intellectual, cultural

and social life in the Third Reich. Trans. 5. At-

tanasio and others. New York: Grosset & Dun-lap.

Murphy, B. 1983. The butcher of Lyon. New York:

Empire.

Neff, R. 1989. Der Streit um den wissenschaftlichell

Tierversuch in der Schweiz des 19. Jahrhunderts. Basel: Schwabe.

Padfield, P. 1984. Donitz: The last Fuhrer. New York: 1-larper and Row.

Payne, R. 1960. The life and death of Adolf Hitler.

New York: Praeger. Peukert, D. 1987. Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity,

opposition, and racism in everyday life. Tr ans. R

Deveson. New Haven: Yale University Press. Posner, G., and J. Ware. 1986. Mengele. New Yolk

McGraw-Hill. Proctor, R. 1988. Racial hygiene. Cambridge: Hai

yard University Press. Radde, G. 1991. Personal communication. Rauschning, H. 1940. The voice of destruction. Nev

York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Rhodes, J. 1980. The Hitler movement. Stanfoic

Hoover Institution. Rosenberg, A. 1935. Der Mythus des 2C

Jahrhunderts. Munich: Hoheneichen. Sax, B. 1990. The frog king: On legends, fables, lair

tales and anecdotes of animals. New York: Pac

University Press. Schopenhauer, A. 1903. The basis of morality. Trail

lated from the German by A. B. Bullock. Londo

Swann, Sonnenschein.

F

--Se'pell, J. 1980. In the company of animals: A study of human-animal relationships. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Shirer, W. 1960. The rise and fall of the Third Reich. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Speer, A. 1970. Inside the Third Reich. New York: Macmillan.

Staff, I., ed. 1964. Justiz int Urine'? Reich: Eine Dokumentation. Frankfort: Fischer Biicherei.

Staudinger, I-I. 1981. The inner Nazi. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.

Stone, N. 1980. Hitler. Boston: Little, Brown. Strasser, 0. 1943. Flight from terror. New York:

R. M. McBride. Taylor, F. 1983. The Coebbels diaries, 1939-1941.

New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Toland, J. 1976. Adolf Hitler. Garden City, N.Y:

Doubleday. Trohler, U., and A. Maehle. 1987. Anti-vivisection in

nineteenth century Germany: Motives and methods. In Vivisection in historical perspective, ed. N. Rupke, pp. 149-87. New York: Croon? Helm.

Viereck, P. 1965. Metapolitics: The roots of the Nazi

mind. New York: Capricorn. Wagner, R. 1987. Selected letters of Richard Wag-

ner. Trans., ed. S. Spencer and B. Millington. New

York: Norton. . 1888a. Heldentum and Christenheit. In

Gesamme/te Schriften and Oichtungen 10:275-

05. Leipzig: G. W. Fritsch. 1888b. Offenes Schreiben an Ernst von

Weber. In Gesammelte Schriften and Dichtun-

gen 10:195-210. Leipzig: G. W. Fritsch. Waite, R. 1977. The psychopathic god. New York:

Basic Books. Weinstein, F. 1980. The dynamics of Nazism. New

York: Academic Press. Woltmann, L. 1936. Politische anthropologic.

Woltmanns Werke, Vol. I. Leipzig: Dorner. Wykes, A. 1972. Himmler. New York: Ballantine. Zollner, F. 1885. Ober den wisscnschaftlichen

Missbrauch der Vivisection. Leipzig: Gustav Fock.